[PaulRobinson]

There are people who have used it as missionary (they're literally called missionaries sometimes), but the book itself does not suppress critical thinking - in fact some of the stories within it challenged me to think about the World in a very different way, and to consider what kind of person I wanted to be and the place I wanted to inhabit in my life, regardless of faith.

I also did not find it prevented me from changing my World view as I grew up. I am not a practicing christian today, but I do think that many christian parables have helped make me a more rounded, generous and thoughtful human being. I am certainly quite likely more empathetic and loving than many others around me.

Read it as a work of fiction and don't be afraid of it "converting you" into a a robot remotely controlled by the pope. You might be surprised.

[ethbr1]

'Thou shalts' tend to be antithetical to free thinking. If nothing else, because it absolves readers from having to independently consider things and encouraging relying on community and/or leader dogma.

We can quibble about whether or not dogmatic interpretations are in the original work or were layered on top by the organized church, but at the root of both is the idea that some things must be believed without questioning.

Up and down this thread there are notes about people who were raised in a religious tradition and then branched out -- that's great, but you all are also the exceptions.

There are far more people who believe what they're told, as a consequence of religious indoctrination, until the day they die.

And because of that, on the whole, the Bible (as used in modern Christianity) is anti- free thought.